Putting Off the Date with the Delivery Room

Forty-somethings leapfrog younger mums

Putting Off the Date with the Delivery Room

Forty-somethings leapfrog younger mums

Doctors may consider the age less than ideal but becoming a mum at 40 is normal today, at least in metropolitan Milan. The trend emerges from new statistics that reveal how 40-year-olds (or nearly) have taken the lead in the maternity stakes. More women between the ages of 35 and 44 now become mums than those who give birth between 25 and 34. The figures are unequivocal: 48.4% to 44.7%. Up till 2008, the positions were reversed: 45.7% to 48.9%. The source is the Mangiagalli gynaecological clinic, sometimes referred to as the “baby factory” on account of its 6,500 deliveries every year. Department head Alessandra Kustermann notes: “It’s a sea change”.

Stamped – often too hard – on the mind of every woman who wants a child are two concepts: when you reach 35, you face more tests for the child’s health, such as CVS (chorionic villus sampling) and amniocentesis; and your fertility curve heads south. It has to be said that in recent decades, women have been giving birth mainly between the ages of 25 and 34. Even today, the latest health ministry childbirth figures, which include May 2013, set the average age of Italian mothers at 32.5 years. Now things have changed.

Dr Kustermann points out: “Surprisingly, it is now more normal at the Mangiagalli to give birth at around 40 than at 30 or so. Fertility curve or no fertility curve. This is a cultural shift that marches in step with advances in medicine”.

Statistics at the Mangiagalli often anticipate data nationwide. It was the Mangiagalli that in 2009 raised the alarm over recession-related abortions and a year later flagged up a rise in the proportion of single mothers (one in five). Now along comes the phenomenon of late motherhood, with roots that experts say lie in the difficulties of starting a family without a steady job or a home of your own.

Medical director Basilio Tiso says: “More than half of new mothers have a degree. It takes longer to get a foot on the employment ladder which, on top of the years spent studying, puts motherhood on hold right up to the limit of the biological clock”. Early indications of the phenomenon coincided with the onset of the recession and the proportion of over-35 mums grew as the credit crunch bit harder. In 2010, the figure was 47.6%; today it has risen to 48.5%. There has also been an unexpected surge in the number of over-45 mums, who have tripled in the past five years (0.5% to 1.4%).

Anyone who puts this down to assisted fertilisation will have to think again for over the same period, the number of couples who underwent fertility treatment increased by just 1.3%.

You have to wonder whether having a child so late in life is actually more difficult. What is the time horizon a woman can give herself for becoming a mum?

An article in the July-August issue of America’s The Atlantic magazine goes against the best-known scientific studies published so far. David Dunson, a researcher in statistics at Duke University, studied the probabilities of conception for 770 European women. He found that mature couples who programmed sexual relations for the right days managed to cancel out the age difference with their younger peers. Similar results were obtained by epidemiologist Kenneth Rothman for Danish women. Forty-year-olds with a previous birth had the same probability of becoming pregnant again as 20-year-olds. We can forget that biological clock, at least for second children. In addition, The Atlantic maintains that most fertility issues are not age-related but associated with diseases, such as endometriosis, which affect younger women as well as older. Male infertility, which increases with age, can also be a factor affecting procreation.

In the past, caution was often advised over late childbirth, partly out of concern for its effect on the child. Psychologist and psychotherapist Anna Oliverio Ferraris, who teaches at Rome’s La Sapienza university, is more upbeat: “Obviously, youth gives people more energy but nowadays, mums and dads keep themselves in better shape than in the past, which offsets the age factor. And when they bring a child into the world, they have greater awareness”.